Pandas love the mountains and snow. Mount Hood, in the picture, is near my home in Oregon.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Planted and Uprooted

The ten bare-root root roses are planted, and we are in the process of being uprooted. After twenty-two years in this home, and nearly all our lives on the west coast, we're getting ready to move to Virginia next year.

The work on detailing the house, preparing it for the market, is already in progress. We'll be going from a single-family home to a condominium, from mild weather to humid summers and freezing winters, and from the casual west to the more formal east. I can't wait! Our family will all be in the same area again, and visits won't require a six-thousand mile round trip.

Like most people who are rooted in a home and a community for decades, we have inadvertently collected a mass of *stuff*. Now comes the weeding process: what to toss, what to give away and what to ship. Shipping costs being nearly the same or even higher than replacement value for many things, there will be plenty to give away.

This is an opportunity to reconfigure our nest, crowded with the memorabilia of our lives, into a more functional and aesthetically pleasing space.

The ski-boat takes up half the space in the garage, and is loaded with sunny memories, but it hasn't seen the water in a decade. Now, instead of slowly turning into a pile of fiberglass dust on the garage floor, which is what I anticipated, it will be sold. We'll still own the sunny memories, so it is a net gain.

Contractors have been selected to upgrade the electrical wiring and to reconfigure the landscaping in the front yard. The internet has become a fantastic tool for searching out a new home thousands of miles away. We've worked out a plan, and the plan is working.

Moving tears down cobwebs, literally and figuratively. Tomorrow: some of the changes that have surfaced in the landscape of my mind.